


23 Words to Describe the Indescribable

by rlficacct



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Episode: e060-066 The Stolen Century Parts 1-7, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-10
Updated: 2020-08-10
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:48:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25831585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rlficacct/pseuds/rlficacct
Summary: What a strange, inexplicable situation they've found themselves in, Barry thinks for the thousandth time.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 9





	23 Words to Describe the Indescribable

**Author's Note:**

> Technically a side story based off a previous story of mine, [Go Back to Sleep](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25831396), but also a standalone; you don't have to read that one for this to make sense. Takes place on Cycle 3.

Barry knocks on Lucretia's door. It's slightly ajar, a good hint that she's in there working but not so busy that she can't be distracted.

"Who is it?" she calls immediately. Barry nudges the door open and she looks up, nods at him to come in.

"Do you have a thesaurus with you?" Barry asks, getting right to the point. She's been working almost non-stop to record everything and he doesn't want to take up any more of her time than he has to. They've got some down time now, which they didn't have on the last plane, and he knows from talking to her that she's still trying to catch up with events that happened in the Animal Kingdom.

Lucretia had been writing in two separate journals, but she drops the pen she was holding in her left hand and pinches the space above her nose, thinking. She keeps writing with her right hand. Her eyes are closed but Barry can see that her lines don't waver at all. Barry's impressed by the amount of muscle memory that must go into being able to maintain that amount of control over what she's doing. Lucretia's so young that it almost seems like a superhuman feat to have reached that level of mastery.

"No, sorry," she says, picking her other pen back up and going back to writing. "It wouldn't have been worth the space it took up. Remember how we had a limited amount we were allowed to pack?" She makes a _hmm_ noise right after she says that and jots a note in a margin. "That's interesting, actually, we should probably make a manifest of what we've got on the ship. I'll have to remember to talk to Davenport about that."

"I'll mention it to him," Barry says. "Thanks." He turns around to go find the Captain, but Lucretia stops him before he can nudge the door closed.

"I didn't bring one because my vocabulary's pretty good already. I'm not _as_ good as a thesaurus, but I might know the word you're looking for?"

Barry leans against the door frame and crosses his arms. "It's not a work thing; it's personal," he hedges.

"If you're comfortable telling me, I'd be more than happy to try to help," she replies.

"It's just- I've had this phrase stuck in my head since the week after we landed on the Animal Kingdom: 'strange, inexplicable situation'. It plays on a loop in my brain every time something else weird happens, or even with things that aren't weird anymore but should be, you know? And I figure, if I'm going to be thinking it over and over again, I just want to make sure I'm using the best words."

Lucretia puts both of her pens down now and clasps her hands together, looking off into the distance. "That's not a bad way to put it," she tells him. "I actually kind of like that; it seems poetic. I can write some stuff down for you now, but if you want to wait a few more hours, I'd rather give that some more thought."

"Oh, you don't have to put that much effort into it," Barry replies.

"No, that's actually a very interesting question. I really would like to take my time on it, if it's not urgent. I can have something for you tonight?"

Barry nods at her, grateful. "That'd be awesome," he says. "I'll go talk to the Captain about that manifest."

Lucretia smiles at him. As he turns to leave, he can see her already reaching into her desk, pulling out a fresh, loose sheet of paper.

\---

Lucretia dedicates the next ten minutes to listing the synonyms she can think of that capture what Barry was saying. In this one aspect she knows she's actually better than the thesaurus. The book would list many words, but a lot of them would be bad descriptions for the specific situation Barry's trying to articulate. Lucretia takes her knowledge of their shared experiences since they left their home world and adds the subtle wistfulness she could hear in Barry's voice when he was telling her what he was looking for, then lists as many appropriate words as she can think of.

_(Bewildering. Inscrutable. Mystifying. Unimaginable)_

She spends the rest of her afternoon working at half speed, only writing with the one hand and letting the other half of her mind gently prod at the puzzle.

_(Unfathomable. Baffling. Fantastic. Singular.)_

She wasn't lying when she told Barry that she'd be glad to help him, and she wasn't even precisely lying about the reason. Lucretia likes puzzles and the satisfaction she gets from solving them. In her professional writing, she sometimes has to struggle to find the best word or phrase to describe something - usually an aspect of the worlds they've landed on that would be unfamiliar to someone who hadn't been there - but her job at this point is more about quantity than quality. She also gets to lean on the fact that currently she's her only audience, and her memory is pretty airtight. She doesn't need to describe everything perfectly in order for her words to be evocative.

_(Mysterious. Bizarre. Perplexing. Remarkable.)_

But the other reason that she jumped at the chance to do something for Barry is that she's been feeling unimportant lately. Everyone on the ship has been doing a lot of practical work, but Lup and Barry especially have been spending a lot of time this cycle in the lab, studying the Light and trying to figure out something that will save them from the loop that they've become stuck in. Lucretia understands that her work as an archivist is important and that _someday_ her work will be invaluable, but right now she's got the least to offer that can actually help them out of this situation and it's hitting her hard. Combine that with the fact that everyone else is growing closer and she feels stuck on the outside when they're all in a group together, and she's been feeling down this year. Anything that's a concretely helpful use of her skills, anything that can help her crewmates who are actually working on getting them out of here, she'll do in a heartbeat.

_(Striking. Incomprehensible. Peculiar. Curious.)_

She curates the list for Barry, takes all the words she's thought of and whittles them down to fit on a small square of paper that she can slide to him over dinner. "These are only a few specific ones," she writes as a preface to the list. "If none of these work, I have more where they came from." She will broaden her list for Barry, will fill a whole notebook with words until he finds something that works, that fits.

_(Indescribable. Exceptional. Marvelous. Incredible.)_

He smiles at her and mouths _thanks_ after he reads the list. He puts it in his pocket. He doesn't come back to her asking for more. She hopes he found the right one.

_(Extraordinary. Wonderful. Unprecedented.)_


End file.
